Three Cities in New Jersey Alter Bike Sharing Plans

HOBOKEN, N.J. — In February, when Hoboken, Jersey City and Weehawken announced that they planned to introduce New Jersey’s first bike-share network, Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of this mile-square city, praised it as the blossoming of a great transportation partnership.

“I am proud to build upon our successful pilot bike-share program and work with our neighbors in Jersey City and Weehawken to create a regional system,” Ms. Zimmer declared, while pledging to have 800 bicycles available by June.

But as it happened with Citi Bike in New York and with similar programs throughout the country, the scheduled start date came and went without any bikes materializing.

In the meantime, Steven Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, decided that he would rather share bikes with New York than with his New Jersey neighbors. The three Hudson County municipalities ultimately went in two separate directions, with Hoboken and Weehawken planning to roll out 300 bikes between them by the end of November and Jersey City hoping to bring 500 to 600 Citi Bikes to its streets by next year.

The cycling schism is a reminder of how hard it can be to introduce a new transit system, even a modest one. And it brings to mind a question: Is northern New Jersey its own entity, or simply a satellite of the metropolis on the other side of the Hudson River?

“Ideally, it shouldn’t be an either-or decision; we need a system that’s both large and integrated,” said Charles Brown, a senior research specialist at the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. “But it’s definitely better to have two systems than none. It shows there’s a real hunger for bike share.”

As thousands of Citi Bikes arrived on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn last year, 25 bicycles intended for sharing appeared in Hoboken under a pilot program. The system initially showed promise for the city’s 52,000 residents, with the bikes getting positive reviews in the cycling press and from riders.

While the Citi Bike system relied on docking stations that sometimes malfunctioned, Hoboken’s shared bikes could be locked to standard bicycle racks, lampposts or street signs with an integrated lock activated by either a smartphone app or a keypad mounted over the rear wheel. Users located available bikes, all of which were equipped with GPS, through the app.

Between June and November of last year, 472 riders logged 3,637 trips, enough to inspire Ms. Zimmer to make bike sharing a permanent part of the Hoboken landscape.

In December, the three municipalities agreed to create a combined system. Bike and Roll, a rental company, was to operate it, in partnership with e3think, a planning group, and P3GM, a management and marketing firm, as well as the German manufacturer Next Bike, which has 20,000 bikes being shared in 14 countries (the northern New Jersey system was to be its first in North America).

But bad publicity generated by technological and financial problems at Alta Bike Share, Citi Bike’s corporate parent, made potential sponsors of the New Jersey network wary.

The lack of sponsors, in turn, delayed the start of the program, though Tom Glendening, the president of e3think, said the partnership was not contractually obligated to have the system up and running until October.

Mr. Fulop, meanwhile, began to rethink the bicycle needs of his city of 254,000. He decided that Jersey City residents would be better served by the system already in place in New York.“What’s most important for me is that folks in the Heights or Greenville,” two of the city’s neighborhoods “where there’s not great access to the PATH, can get to the train, get out on the other side and then get on a bike,” he said.

The mayor said he also viewed joining the Citi Bike system as a way of attracting New Yorkers to jobs, restaurants and cultural offerings in Jersey City. “With Citi Bike,” he said, “the benefits go both ways.”

Weehawken, which has 13,500 residents, decided to stick with Hoboken.

“We’re neighbors, so it’s a great way for people to go out to restaurants or shops in either place, as well as an alternative means to get to the ferry,” Mayor Richard F. Turner said.

“The terrain is pretty tight, very up-and-down around here,” he added, “so we’ll see how popular it is.”

For the municipalities and, by extension, their residents, the decision to part ways was largely financial.

Bicycles in a Next Bike system cost the operator about $1,200 each; by comparison, Citi Bikes cost about $5,000 apiece, in part because of the need for the docking stations. The difference in price means that while Hoboken and Weehawken can let those running their shared system bear the costs, Jersey City may have to offer subsidies if it cannot find enough sponsors to make its program viable.

“Because our system costs so much less, we don’t need as much sponsorship to make it profitable,” said Mr. Glendening, adding that sponsors were still being sought for the combined Hoboken-Weehawken program.

Memberships in that program are expected to cost the same as those in New York’s Citi Bike system: $9.95 a day, $25 a week or $95 a year. Jersey City residents who sign up for Citi Bike there will be able to use bikes on both sides of the Hudson with a single membership.

Mr. Fulop said he was unconcerned about the problems that Citi Bike encountered and hoped that a pending deal to rescue the system would allow it to expand to Jersey City by May, though that deal could involve higher membership fees.

However long it takes, cyclists appear willing to wait.

“Personally, I spend a lot more time biking in New York than in Hoboken,” said Tony Borelli, a board member of the advocacy group Bike JC.

Ms. Zimmer said she had no regrets about how things had developed. “I hope we can integrate with Citi Bike someday, but launching was more important,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Three Cities in New Jersey Alter Bike Sharing Plans. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe